Plugins - 9 – Serendipity

Because of a problem with accessing our netmirror.org mirror server, the spartacus repository currently only shows listed plugin versions of the last week. New plugins are currently not updated there, so please bear with the service until the trouble is resolved.

We are also working on providing alternate file mirrors, as well as a fellow Serendipity user (MySchizoBuddy) is currently working on PEAR-Channel services for plugins -- many thanks!

On another related note, the staticpage plugin has received an enormous update from Falk Döring today, rectifying a 3.0 version release. This updated version now allows to define custom page types, change the sort order of static pages, fixes some back/previous navigation issues and some more "behind the scenes" stuff. Many thanks to Falk for keeping up his great work.

Another Serendipity supporter that has been overwhelmingly active the last days is Alexander Mieland (dma147). He has provided a boast of cool plugins: A backup plugin, a forum plugin, a downloadmanager and some more: Read the forums.

With your help, Serendipity is able to continue being a great and enhancible blog application. It's great to see the community evolve, keep it up and spread the word! :-)

We have a new volunteer who likes to get his hands a bit more dirty by wading through the cool Serendipity Plugin Architecture.

Alexander already has provided us with the useful Downloadmanager-Plugin and asks on our forums if there are any open plugin requests or ideas.

So it's up to you people - tell us which plugins you still need. Serendipity already has a large repository of many useful plugins, but there might still be a need for more - right? :-)

The plugin serendipity_event_authorpic ("Picture of the author") has been obsoleted. Its functionality is now included in the serendipity_event_userprofiles ("User profiles") plugin.

The reason is that we are trying to not have redundant plugins in our repository that unneccessarily swamp the amount of available plugins. We are not trying to make any "Uber-Plugins" which bundle many functionalities - but in this case, both plugins handle personal user information, and it is just better suitable inside a single plugin.

Users who have that plugin currently installed do not need to do anything. The plugin just is no longer maintained. If anyone is using both plugins in conjunction, he should upgrade to the new userprofile plugin and remove the authorpic plugin then.

I've just added the serendipity_event_httpauth ("HTTP-Authentication") plugin to our CVS, where it will appear shortly and in Spartacus as well.

The plugin is very basic: It authenticates you via HTTP Auth instead of using a HTML form for your login. This plugin is not needed in most environments, but can provide very helpful if you don't want any visitor to see your frontpage already, and thus you can shut out any visitors without access to your installation completely.

People who know what I'm talking about might find this helpful. All others can safely ignore this new plugin ;-)

For quite some time people have requested a plugin to manage (and count) file downloads. Alexander Mieland was so kind to hear those prayers and develop his downloadmanager plugin.

The plugin allows you to attach and upload several files and make them available in a nuke-like category hierarchy. Have a look at Alexanders page to see a demo.

The files have been added to CVS and the version bumped to 0.3 because of some changes to the plugin (bbcode, download counting) made after version 0.2. Have fun and thanks to Alexander!

Some new plugin contributions were added to CVS today:

• serendipity_event_tooltips ("Tooltips") by Enrico Stahn allows you to use overlib for showing alt/title tags and some more.
• serendipity_event_galleryimage ("Markup: Gallery Image") is a custom markup plugin that allows to insert [GImage] markup for inserting images of Gallery (1.x) installations easily. Read Rob A's (Im)personal Blog for details.

Thank you, guys! Plugins are available in Spartacus/CVS the next 1-2 days.

On an unrelated sidenote: People using the alpha5 version should update to the next nightly tomorrow. Spartacus and Permission bugfixes have been committed today.